That Bowl Was Super, Thanks For Asking

Biggest sporting event of the year: Check
Dopey, over-hyped commercials: Double check
Me watching and making fun of it: Another no-brainer

Pre-game highlights? Um...I refuse to watch pre-game shows as a rule. Also, if anything doesn't need nine hours of hype leading up to it, it's the superbowl. So my pre-game viewing consisted of watching other channels until kick-off. The highlight was on Fox News. They were breathlessly covering a U-Haul truck which had been pulled over in Arizona. Supposedly the truck was full of illegal immigrants from Mexico. When the police breached the back of the truck, it was empty. In the immortal words of Kent Brockman, "so, once again, we've been duped". My favorite part was when the anchor said "there could have been dangerous people inside; snipers, drug cartel members, Mexicans". Wait, what was that last one?

My other pre-game comment comes from NBC. After an awesome hockey game (isn't every hockey game an awesome hockey game?), they showed a PGA tour event. My level of interest in golf without Tiger Woods is roughly equal to what my interest level would be in a hockey game without ice or a NASCAR race without gasoline. Note to the PGA: Your sport sucks without Tiger Woods, I don't care if he's a sex maniac, get him back, now.

Hey, am I the only one getting a little tired of hearing the national anthem before everything? (Probably). I don't necessarily need us to stop doing it, or even to change the song around too much, but maybe just an updated version. I nominate Them Crooked Vultures to create it. I could sit through a Zac Brown Band concert if Dave Grohl was on drums. OK, enough stalling, football time.

CBS stole NBC's idea of having the players introduce themselves, but they forgot to steal the best part, so we didn't get to hear Jeremy Shockey or Reggie Wayne tell us they're from "The U". Over/Under on mentions of Dwight Freeney's ankle tonight, 52.5. Saints go three and out on the first possession, not a good omen. Also, the crowd sounds roughly 104% pro-Saints. Good for them, if you weren't already a Colts fan before the season started, there's simply no excuse for not rooting for the Saints.

Jim Caldwell has the blank stare working right from the start. Field goal on the Colts' first possession. Commercials so far; house made of Bud Light; old people playing football, I think they were trying to sell me a Snickers; and Tim Tebow tackling his mom, which apparently had something to do with focus on the family. The kickoff back to the Saints was followed by an awful commercial featuring the '85 Bears, I think they were trying to sell me a cell phone or something.

Finally the Saints get a first down. The Colts are bringing a ton of pressure. I've never gotten the impression that the Saints are a team that can be rattled by pressure, Brees doesn't strike me as that kind of guy. Marques Colston dropped a big play, he's still mourning the loss of the Hofstra football program. The next pass was incomplete after obvious pass interference. Hey Saints! Don't expect too many calls today, you're playing Peyton Manning.

These commercials are awful, I refuse to buy any of these products. If the Colts go 96 yards for a touchdown right here, we may be in for a long night. Two weeks ago, the Saints hit Brett Favre late on almost every play (and hardly ever got called for it, even the NFL is sick of Brett). This week, Peyton Manning looks pretty comfortable so far, but the Saints look like they're getting closer. Hey, where has Joseph Addai been all year? Three good runs on this drive, which is at least three more than I remember seeing from him this season. Touchdown, Manning to Garcon. You could kind of feel that one coming. The Saints defense looks pretty overmatched right now. If the Saints don't start scoring, this could get ugly, like Denver Broncos ugly, even Buffalo Bills ugly.

It's official, I'm never eating Doritos or drinking any Budweiser product again. Ever. I hate these commercials so much. Furthermore, I'd pay $12 to see Jackass 4: Jackass Forever before I'd see this new Robin Hood movie with Russell Crowe. Also, that cars.com commercial was like a lot of my blog posts. It just sort of wandered around for a while making jokes with varying degrees of success and hoping to stumble across a point eventually.

Late hit out of bounds on the Colts and Simms just made a good point; why are these sidelines so crowded? It's like they're playing inside a night club. Good drive working here for the Saints. Even a field goal could maybe get them settled a little. OK, Dwight Freeney just forced a field goal by dragging Drew Brees down with one hand after running over the left tackle. I think his ankle is at least decently functional.

We just learned that Jim Nantz is conversant in the CBS Monday night comedy line-up, that came right after a fantastic commercial for Letterman's show featuring him, Oprah and Leno. Did Jay lose a bet? Then we got an awful Hyundai commercial featuring Brett Favre. Finally a punt from the Colts, the fair catch by Reggie Bush caused the whole stadium to the do the disappointed sigh. Seriously, there may not be any Colts fans in Florida right now.

Brees just threw a rocket to Shockey, but since Jeremy isn't 9 feet tall, that one almost got picked. Brees isn't always great at being careful with the ball, that could be a problem tonight. Another catch for Colston, go Flying Dutchmen! You heard me. Pride? Eff that. What the hell kind of a team name is that? No wonder they had to cut the football program because no one was coming to the games.

I love how we a get "Uuuuuuuu" from the crowd every time Vilma or Shockey makes a play. If I was a big time high school football player, I'd tell all the other colleges to not even bother. The Saints just ran a play that seemed to be designed to lose 7 yards, and it worked perfectly. I guess they needed some more room for the 27 yard pass play that happened next.

Commercials during the two minute warning included the best line of the night so far: "flowers in a box? that's what cigarettes and dead people come in". I like that, what was it a commercial for? I don't know, I guess flowers not in a box. Also, CSI Miami is going to space. Could Emily Procter be even cuter in space than she is on earth? I guess we'll find out.

After the warning, a goal line stuff by the Colts D. A 6+ minute Saints drive gets nothing. Like a swift kick to the groin of every Saints fan. At least the Colts were trapped far enough down field they just decided not to try anything with the football before the half. Three and out for the Colts and it's Reggie Bush time again.

It looks like they're building either a Harry Potter theme park or a Harry Potter section in another theme park. Either way, how did that take so long? I'd have to invent a new number, like say, eleventy billion, to estimate how much money that place could make.

Here's something funny about me. I have almost no ability to feel empathy for other humans, but whenever I see a commercial involving a robot that's supposed to be depressed for some reason, I feel genuinely bad for the robot. What kind of psychopath does that make me? Don't answer that. Anyway, good job by New Orleans of getting a field goal before the half. I thought this was supposed to be a "shoot-out". Football experts everywhere said so. Am I watching the wrong game? Is this some kind of consolation game?

Halftime Comments:
I like The Who, everybody likes The Who, but can we please get some current music. OK, so the awesome Jay-Z/Rhianna/Eminem halftime show would scare the flyover states (and everyone else over 40). How about Kings of Leon, or Green Day, or Pearl Jam, or Velvet Revolver? (provided Scott isn't in jail, or high, or just missing for unexplained reasons, OK you'd need a back-up act if you scheduled Velvet Revolver) Of course, the Velvet Revolver show would end with the surprise GnR reunion. I will keep coming up with GnR reunion ideas until someone takes one and makes it work.

The Saints started the second half with an onsides kick. That's balls right there. After about a two minute scrum for the ball, the Saints come out with it. How awesome was that? 13 out of 10 on the awesome scale. Jim Caldwell's reaction? Blank stare. The Saints reaction? Marching right down the field for their first touchdown. And what does coach Caldwell think of this start to the second half? He thinks it's a good time to stare blankly.

Peyton Manning used to be good for a self-destruction in this kind of situation. Recently though, he's been pretty unflappable. Man, the Colts are just calmly marching right back down the field like nothing even happened. I'm not a Manning fan at all, but that was pretty impressive. They just sliced through the Saints D and took the lead back, completely blunted all the Saints' momentum, stunning, I'm stunned.

We're getting pretty close to adding Coca-cola to the list of products I'm never buying again. It's tougher, because I like Coke, but these commercials are pretty unbearable. Also, they've played Metallica at least three times during highlight packages. Why couldn't we get them for halftime?

The Saints seem to have found a little something here, they're moving down the field again. It's possible the Colts D is getting a little winded, they've been out there quite a bit. Settling for the field goal here doesn't feel great. If I had money on the Saints, I'd be nervous right about now. By the way, I really liked that Google commercial, well done.

"This could only be one place; A tradition like no other; Hide the women because Tiger's coming. The Masters on CBS."

The Saints aren't getting anywhere near Peyton Manning right now. The Colts went for it on 4th&2 and made it look easy. Simms commented "Jim Caldwell isn't afraid to make a bold decision". Really? I don't think I saw Manning even look over at the sideline before going for it. Kudos to the Saints D for stepping up, the Colts were looking unstoppable, then all of a sudden we see a 51 yard field goal try go wide left and the Saints are left with excellent field position.

Did Emerald Nuts and Pop Secret have to pool their money for a superbowl spot? Are they even owned by the same company? Am I supposed to eat them together? That was weird.

Here come the Saints again. I'm not sure the Colts D has much left. Another nice catch by Colston. The dude's pretty good, he must have gone to an awesome college. A Saints TD is looking pretty inevitable right now. I have a prediction, if Shockey scores here, this pro-Saints Miami crowd will completely lose it's collective mind. And there it is. Way to score and work the crowd at the same time. The Saints missed the two point conversion though, that can't be good. That looked close, I might have challenged that. Sean Payton might have challenged it too, and, in fact, he did. That looks like a catch to me, Lance Moore had it for a while before that guy kicked it away. Play overturned, Saints up by seven. Great play by Lance Moore too. That almost makes up for the week he gave my fantasy team a big fat 0.

Five years ago, there's no way Manning pulls off this comeback. Now? I'm terrified for the Saints. I couldn't tell if the green police commercial during the injury timeout was pro-environment or anti-environment, but then we found out it was just pro-car (what kind of car? I already forgot. Volkswagen maybe). And there's the Peyton Manning I remember from my younger and more innocent days. INT returned for a TD by Tracy Porter. 31-17 Saints. No one is going to work in New Orleans tomorrow. No one.

The Saints are spending the last few minutes just trying to hang on and giving up huge chunks of yardage. Stupid late hit penalty stopped the clock. Luckily for the Saints, that was immediately followed by an offensive pass interference penalty that moved the Colts back ten yards and forced them to use a timeout. After a ridiculous run call on 3rd&Goal, incomplete pass on fourth down and it's officially over.

After the first quarter, once the Saints got their heads in the game, this was a pretty hard ass kicking. The Saints dominated the last three quarters of this game. Drew Brees is the pretty obvious MVP. The Gatorade bath guys almost killed a few people on the sideline trying to get the bucket to the coach, but they got it done. There really isn't anything else to say. Solid game, great outcome, crappy commercials. Everything you could ask for in a superbowl.

Tilting At Windmills

I was watching CNN Sunday night and...wait, stop right there. Why was I watching CNN Sunday night? Well, the Mad Men season is over, Fox was showing re-runs and my favorite part of Sunday Night Football (other than Collinsworth) had already happened. For my money, the best part of SNF is when the players introduce themselves. I especially enjoy the Miami guys, as in "Bryant McKinnie, The U" and "Jon Beason, The..U already know". And yes, I saw the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary "The U" and yes, it was awesome. Also, the tag line, "What if I told you college football was hit by a decade long hurricane?", best movie tag line ever, I will accept no other nominees. That was my quickest digression to date, back to CNN.

CNN's Planet in Peril series had taken our intrepid reporter, one Anderson Cooper, to Hawaii. Anderson has a tough job. We were learning about the early stages of Hawaii's energy revolution, which is important because going to Hawaii is like a 17 hour flight for everyone, so I think they owe us all some oil. Of the many things I saw, two stood out.

First, some science guys have decided to air condition about 40 buildings in Honolulu by piping sea water in from offshore (and deep down, so it's cold) and running it through a pipe system which would cool the buildings, sort of like how refrigerators work. When I worked in Manhattan, I worked with a guy who couldn't afford an air conditioner for his apartment. His genius plan was to put a big bowl of ice in front of his fan. I'm sure the sea water AC guys thought their plan through a little more thoroughly than my old co-worker, but this still sounds more like a harebrained scheme than a great idea.

Second, we saw a 20-turbine wind farm in Maui. The turbines use computers to harness the wind in the most efficient way and they power about 9 percent of the island. This sounds a little more promising. The only problem is, anytime you want to put these things somewhere, the locals go nuts because nobody buys beachfront property so they can look at windmills. That's what happened in Maui, these 20 turbines didn't get built until oil prices went so high people just couldn't take it anymore. This stood out in my mind because it really epitomizes the way most people seem to feel about the environment. We're not anti-environment, but the things we have to do to improve the environment are annoying and inconvenient, and why bother saving the planet if we can't have a clear view of the pretty ocean?

I already had climate issues on the brain, because the President was over in Copenhagen last week at some sort of U.N. climate meeting. (Sidenote: I also saw Glenn "Goldmember" Beck recently announce on his show that he refuses to pronounce Copenhagen correctly. If I had the time, I think my blog would just be me watching every episode of Glenn's show and pointing out how consistently stupid he is. He's the best.) I, for one, was impressed with what the world's leaders got done in Denmark. They seem to have struck a very important deal to all go back to their respective countries and pretend they struck a very important deal. Good for them.

Truth is, if I was China or India or a number of other developing nations, I wouldn't be interested in a climate deal either. Picture this. You and I get stranded on an island. We've got water, but very little food. After a few weeks of eating dirt and whatever plants we figured out weren't poisonous, a plane flies over and randomly drops two big, delicious steaks on our island. I find them first and eat one right away. Then you show up, you see the one empty steak box and deduce that I've clearly eaten what was inside, and you go to eat the second steak, but I say you can't. I say it's all the food we have and we better ration it. Would you be cool with that? No, of course not. You'd say I got to eat my steak and the second one is yours and you can do whatever you want with it. We spent quite a bit of time burning fossil fuels with impunity and building our big shiny country. Now other countries want their industrial revolutions and we're telling them they need to watch their emissions and think about the planet. We may be right, but it isn't exactly fair (and sure, life's not fair, but try telling that to China, damn communists).

So, there's a lot of stories swirling around these days about the environment and climate change. Copenhagen, stolen e-mails from scientists, our liberal Congress making noise about trying to do some environmental stuff before they get thrown out of office next November. I have to admit, I'm a little torn on the climate change/global warming issue. I'm not one of these deniers who thinks we can ignore giant pieces of Antarctica breaking off because it still gets cold in the winter (Sean Hannity thought it was hilarious that it was snowing in Denmark during the U.N. conference. Does it ever stop snowing in Denmark? I'd like to see an episode of Jeopardy with Sean, Glenn Beck and anyone from Fox and Friends). And I'm not one of these people who thinks the science is still up in the air, mostly because that's what idiots say about evolution too, and whenever I hear it I get the sudden urge to hit someone over the head with a monkey.

I'm torn on climate change for the same reason you haven't seen an entire blog post from me complaining about MTV's Jersey Shore (I watched like seven minutes of an episode last week, just long enough to get a sense of what was happening but not so long that I could no longer control the urge to kill myself. The apocalypse is coming people, there's nothing you can do about it now). We all agree it's a very bad thing, but can we really do anything about it? Short of giving up all the cars and electricity right now, can we really fix this problem with gradual emissions reductions and solar panels?

Then I think, maybe I'm disheartened because our current ideas for responding to climate change are so crappy. Exhibit A, ethanol. Yes, ethanol produced from sugarcane has done a lot for Brazil, but we don't have sugarcane, we have corn. Currently most (or maybe even all, I don't know, or really care) of our gas is 10% ethanol. Hooray? I can't remember where I heard this, maybe an episode of The West Wing, but I once heard somebody compare dealing with an oil shortage by subsidizing ethanol to dealing with a gin shortage by subsidizing tonic water.

Exhibit B, cap and trade. This is where businesses that pollute get some sort of cap on how much they can pollute. If a business comes in under the cap, they can sell their extra pollution allowance to some other business that just can't help itself, creating a cash incentive for polluting as little as possible. I feel like I shouldn't even have to explain how stupid this is. This is like telling a criminal who killed 20 people this year that he can only kill 15 people next year, and if he wants to kill anyone else, he has to buy more murders from some other, less homicidal criminal. In theory, you'd get some murder reduction, but wouldn't you kind of be missing the point? That murder is bad and reducing it by a little bit only makes things a little bit less bad.

This is where I'm stuck. Are there better ideas out there somewhere that can reverse whatever climate change is already happening? Or, are our efforts to fight climate change just futile attempts that only serve to make us feel better? I don't know. I'm not saying this would mean we shouldn't try. 200 years from now, when our clever descendants have learned how to live under the sea, it would be nice for them to be able to look back at us and say "at least they tried".

This isn't one of those times when I say we need to either come up with a great idea or just shut up and die. I think we should keep trying. Sometimes good ideas come from bad ideas. Like, maybe if we make enough ethanol, we'll create ethanol based leprechauns who can use rainbows to clear all the carbon dioxide out of the sky. This is a great idea because, of course, as leprechauns, their rainbows would all lead to pots of gold, so it's a win all the way around. But let's be realistic, we're at least 15 years away from leprechaun technology. In the mean time, isn't it possible that we're just tilting at windmills with our alternative energies and clever pollution cap schemes?

The good news? The planet isn't going anywhere, the planet will be here long after we're gone. When people say we should save the planet, they mean we should save ourselves. If the worst fears of climate change scientists are realized, life might suck for a while, but we're smart (well, some of us are, a few at least) and we'll figure out a way to get past it. The really good news? If programs like the wind turbines in Maui get more popular, we'll have plenty of windmills to joust with.

Totally unrelated PS...I learned something today. Did you know Toys for Tots is run by the Marine Corps Reserves? I didn't know that. There are a lot of worthy charities out there, and it's hard to choose, but Toys for Tots allows you to help out, ya know, tots, and also the Marines. http://www.toysfortots.org/